CHAPTER XXI—DIVERS HAPPENINGS

“I DON’T think I want any champagne,” said Claire smilingly, as Nick filled a glass and handed it to her. “Being utterly free like this produces much the same effect. I feel drunk, Nick—drunk with happiness. Oh, why can’t I be always free——”

She broke off abruptly in her speech, her face whitening, and stared past Nick with dilated eyes. Her lips remained parted, just as when she had ceased speaking, and the breath came between them unevenly.

Nick followed the direction of her glance. But he could see nothing to account for her suddenly stricken expression of dismay. A man in chauffeur’s livery, vaguely familiar to him, was approaching, and it was upon him that Claire’s eyes were fixed in a sick gaze of apprehension. It reminded Nick of the look of a wounded bird, incapable of flight, as it watches the approach of a hungry cat.

“What is it?” he asked quickly. “What’s the matter? For God’s sake don’t look like that, Claire!”

Slowly, with difficulty, she wrenched her eyes away from that sleek, conventional figure in the dark green livery.

“Don’t you see who it is?” she asked in a harsh, dry whisper.

Before Nick could answer, the man had made his way to Claire’s side and paused respectfully.

“Beg pardon, my lady,” he said, touching his hat, “Sir Adrian sent me to say that he’s waiting for you in the car just along the road there.” He pointed to where, on the white ribbon of road which crossed the Moor not far from the base of the tor, a stationary car was visible.

Claire, her face ashen, turned to Nick in mute appeal.

“Sir Adrian? I thought he left for London this morning?”

Nick shot the question fiercely at the chauffeur, but the man’s face remained respectfully blank.

“No, sir. Sir Adrian drove as far as Exeter and then returned. Afterwards we drove on here, sir, and they told us in the village we should find you at Shelston Tors.”

Meanwhile the other members of the party were becoming aware that some contretemps had occurred. Claire’s white, stricken face was evidence enough that something was amiss, and simultaneously Lady Anne and Jean hurried forward, filled with apprehension.

“What is it, Claire?” asked Lady Anne, suspecting bad news of some kind. “What has happened?” Recognising the Charnwood livery, she turned to the chauffeur and continued quickly: “Has Sir Adrian met with an accident?” She could conceive of no other cause for the man’s unexpected appearance.

“No, my lady. Sir Adrian is waiting in the car for her ladyship.”

“Waiting in the car?” repeated Jean and Lady Anne in chorus.

The little group of friends drew closer together.

“Don’t you see what it means?” broke out Claire in a low voice of intense anger. “It’s been all a trick—a trick! He never meant to go to London at all. He only pretended to me that he was going, so that I should think that I was free and he could trap me.” She looked at Nick and Jean significantly. “He must have overheard us—that day in the shrubbery at Charnwood—you remember?” They both nodded. “And then planned to humiliate me in front of half the county.”

“But you won’t go back with him?” exclaimed Nick hotly. He swung round and addressed the chauffeur stormily. “You can damn well tell your master that her ladyship will return this evening with the rest of the party.” The man’s face twitched. As far as it is possible for a well-drilled servant’s face to express the human emotion of compassion, his did so.

“It would be no good, sir,” he said in a low voice. “He means her ladyship to come. ‘Go and fetch her away, Langton,’ was his actual words to me. I didn’t want the job, sir, as you may guess.”

“Well, she’s not coming, that’s all,” declared Nick determinedly.

“Oh, I must, Nick—I must go,” cried Claire in distress. “I—I daren’t stay.”

Lady Anne nodded.

“Yes, I think she must go, Nick dear,” she said persuasively. “It would he—-wiser.”

“But it’s damnable!” ejaculated Nick furiously. “It’s only done to insult her—to humiliate her!”

Claire smiled a little wistfully.

“I ought to be used to that by now,” she said a trifle shakily. “Put Lady Anne is right—I must go.” She turned to the chauffeur, dismissing him with a little air of dignity that, in the circumstances, was not without its flavour of heroism. “You can go on ahead, Langton, and tell Sir Adrian that I am coming.”

The man touched his hat and moved off obediently.

“Nick and I will walk down to the car with you,” said Lady Anne. She was fully alive to the fact that her escort might contribute towards ameliorating the kind of reception Claire would obtain from her husband. “Jean dear, look after everybody for me for a few minutes, will you? And,” raising her voice a little, “explain that Claire has been called home suddenly, as Sir Adrian was not well enough to make the journey to town, after all.”

But Lady Anne’s well-meant endeavour to throw dust in the eyes of the rest of the party was of comparatively little use. Although to many of them Claire was personally an entire stranger—since Sir Adrian intervened whenever possible to prevent her from forming new friendships—the story of her unhappy married life was practically public property in the neighbourhood, and it was quite evident that to all intents and purposes the detestable husband had actually insisted on her returning with him, exactly as a naughty child might be swept off home by an irate parent in the middle of a jolly party.

It was impossible to stem the flood of gossip, and though most of it was kindly enough, and wholeheartedly sympathetic to Lady Latimer, Jean’s cheeks burned with indignation that Claire’s dignity should be thus outraged.

The remainder of the afternoon was spoilt for her, and Nick’s stormy face when he, together with Lady Anne, rejoined the rest of the party did not help to lighten her heart.

“I’m so sorry, Nick,” she whispered compassionately, when presently the opportunity of a few words alone with him occurred.

He glared at her.

“Are you?” he said shortly. “I’m not. I think I’m glad. This ends it. No woman can be expected to put up with public humiliation of that sort.”

“Nick!” There was a sharp note of fear in Jean’s voice. “Nick, what do you mean? What are you going to do?”

There was an ugly expression on the handsome boyish-looking face.

“You’ll know soon enough,” was all he vouchsafed. And swung away from her.

Jean felt troubled. She had never seen Nick before with that set, still look on his face—a kind of bitter concentration which reminded her forcibly of his brother—and she rather dreaded what it might portend.

Her thoughts were still preoccupied with the afternoon’s unpleasant episode, and with the possible consequences which might accrue, as she climbed into Burke’s high dog-cart.

She had had a fleeting notion of claiming Claire’s vacant seat for the homeward run, but had dismissed it since actually Claire’s absence merely served to provide comfortable room for Blaise in the Willow Ferry car, which had held its full complement of passengers on the outward journey. Moreover, she reflected that any change of plan, now that she had agreed to drive back with Burke, might only lead to trouble. He was not in a mood to brook being thwarted.

A big, raking chestnut, on wires to be off, danced between the shafts of the dog-cart, irritably pawing the ground and jerking her handsome, satin-skinned head up and down with a restless jingle of bit and curb-chain. She showed considerable more of the white of a wicked-looking eye than was altogether reassuring as she fought impatiently against the compulsion of the steady hand which gripped the reins and kept her, against her will, at a standstill.

The instant she felt Jean’s light foot on the step her excitement rose to fever heat. Surely this must mean that at last a start was imminent and that that firm, masterful pressure on the bit would be released!

But Burke had leaned forward to tuck the light dust-rug round Jean’s knees, and regarding this further delay as beyond bearing the chestnut created a diversion by going straight up in the air and pirouetting gaily on her hind legs.

“Steady now!”

Burke’s calm tones fell rebukingly on the quivering, sensitive ears, and down came two shining hoofs in response, as the mare condescended to resume a more normal pose. The next moment she was off at a swinging trot, breaking every now and again, out of pure exuberance of spirits, into a canter, sternly repressed by those dominating hands whose quiet mastery seemed conveyed along the reins as an electric current is carried by a wire.

“You needn’t be afraid,” remarked Burke. “She’ll settle down in a few minutes. It’s only a ‘stable ahead’ feeling she’s suffering from. There’s not an ounce of vice in her composition.”

“I’m not afraid,” replied Jean composedly.

She did not tell him why. But within herself she knew that no woman would ever be afraid with Geoffrey Burke. Afraid of him, possibly, but never afraid that he would not be entire master of any situation wherein physical strength and courage were the paramount necessities.

She reflected a little grimly to herself that it was this very forcefulness which gave the man his unquestionable power of attraction. There is always a certain fascination in sheer, ruthless strength—a savour of magnificence about it, something tentatively heroic, which appeals irresistibly to that primitive instinct somewhere hidden in the temperamental make-up of even the most ultra-twentieth-century feminine product.

And Jean was quite aware that she herself was not altogether proof against the attraction of Burke’s dynamic virility.

There was another kind of strength which appealed to her far more. She knew this, too. The still, quiet force that was Tormarin’s—deep, and unfathomable, and silent, of the spirit as well as of the body. Contrasted with the savage power she recognised in Burke, it was like the fine, tempered steel of a rapier compared with a heavy bludgeon.

“A penny for your thoughts!”

Jean came out of her reverie with a start. She smiled.

“Don’t get conceited. I was thinking about you.”

“Nice thoughts, I hope, then?” suggested Burke. “It’s better”—audaciously—“to think well of your future husband.”

The old gipsy’s words flashed into Jean’s mind: “You’m bound together so fast and firm as weddin-ring could bind ’ee,” and her face flamed scarlet.

It was true—at least as far as she was concerned—that no wedding-ring could bind her more firmly to Blaise than her own heart had already bound her.

The instinct to flirt with Burke was in abeyance. It was an instinct only born of heartache and unhappiness, and now that Blaise’s mood was so much less cool and distant than, it had been, the temptation to play with unexploded bombs had correspondingly lost much of its charm.

“Don’t be tiresome, Geoffrey,” she said vexedly. “If only you would make up your mind to be—just pals, I should think much better of you.”

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to think worse,” he retorted.

Just at that moment they encountered a flock of sheep, ambling leisurely along towards them and blocking up the narrow roadway, and Jean was spared the necessity of replying by the fact that Burke immediately found his hands full, manoeuvring a path for the mare between the broad, curly backs of the bleating multitude.

The drover of the flock was, of course, a hundred yards or more behind his charges, negligently occupied in relighting his pipe, so that no assistance was to be looked for in that direction, and as the sheep bumped against the mare’s legs and crowded up against the wheels of the trap in their characteristically maddening fashion, it required all Burke’s skill and dexterity to make a way through the four-footed crowd.

The chestnut’s own idea of dealing with the difficulty was to charge full speed ahead, an idea which by no means facilitated matters, and she fought her bit and fairly danced with fury as Burke checked her at almost every yard.

They had nearly reached the open road again, and Jean, looking down on the sea of woolly backs, with the hovering cloud of hoof-driven dust above them, thought she could fully appreciate the probable feelings of the Israelites as they approached the further shore of the Red Sea. And it was just at this inauspicious moment that the drover, having lit his pipe to his satisfaction, looked up and grasped the situation.

Guilty conscience not only makes cowards, but is also prolific in the creation of fools, and the drover, stung into belated action by the consciousness of previous remissness, promptly did the most foolish thing he could.

He let off a yell that tore its way through every quivering nerve in the mare’s body, and with a shout of, “Round ’em, lad!” sent his dog—a half-trained youngster—barking like a creature possessed, full tilt in pursuit of the sheep.

That settled it as far as the chestnut was concerned. With a bound she leapt forward, scattering the two or three remaining sheep that still blocked her path, and the next moment the light, high cart was rocking like a cockle-shell in a choppy sea, as she tore along, utterly out of hand.

Luckily, for a couple of miles the road ran straight as a dart, and after the first gasp of alarm Jean found herself curiously collected and able to calculate chances. At the end of the two miles, she know, there came a steep declivity—a typical Devonshire hill, like the side of a house, which the British workman had repaired in his usual crude and inefficient manner, so that loose stones and inequalities of surface added to the dangers of negotiation. At the foot of this descent was a sharp double turn—a veritable death-trap. Could Burke possibly got the mare in hand before they reached the brow of the hill? Jean doubted it.

There was no sound now in all the world except the battering of the mare’s hoofs upon the road and the screaming rush of the wind in their ears. The hedges flew past, a green, distorted blur. The strip of road fled away beneath them as though coiled up by some swift revolving cylinder; ahead, it ended sheer against a sky blue as a periwinkle, and into that blue they were rushing at thirty miles an hour. When they reached it, it would be the end. Jean could almost hear the crash that must follow, sense the sickening feeling of being flung headlong, hurled into space.... hurtling down into black nothingness.,..

Her glance sought Burke’s face. His jaw was out-thrust, and she could guess at the clenched teeth behind the lips that shut like a rat-trap. His eyes gleamed beneath the penthouse brows, drawn together so that they almost met above his fighting beak of a nose.

In an oddly detached manner she found herself reflecting on the dogged brute strength of his set face. If anyone could check that flying, foam-flecked form, rocketing along between the shafts like a red-brown streak, he could.

She wondered how long he would be able to hold the beast—to hang on? She remembered having heard that, after a time, the strain of pulling against a runaway becomes too much for human nerves and muscles, and that a man’s hands grow numb—and helpless! While the dead pull on the bit equally numbs the mouth of the horse, so that he, too, has no more any feeling to be played upon by the pressure of the hit.

Her eyes dropped to Burke’s hands. With a little inward start of astonishment she realised that he was not attempting to pull against the chestnut. He was just holding... holding... steadying her, ever so little, in her mad gallop. Jean felt the mare swerve, then swing level again, still answering faintly to the reins.

Burke’s hands were very still. She wondered vaguely why—now—he didn’t pit his strength against that of the runaway. They must have covered a mile or more. A bare half-mile was all that still lay between them and disaster.

And then, as she watched Burke’s hands, she saw them move, first one and then the other, sawing the bit against the tender corners of the mare’s mouth. Jean was conscious of a faint difference in the mad pace of her. Not enough to be accounted a check—but still something, some appreciable slackening of the whirlwind rush towards that blue blur of sky ahead.

It seemed as though Burke, too, sensed that infinitesimal yielding to the saw of the bit. For the first time, he gave a definite pull at the reins. Then he relaxed the pressure, and again there followed the same sawing motion and the fret of the steel bar against sensitive, velvet lips. Then another pull—the man’s sheer strength against the mare’s.... Jean watched, fascinated.

And gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, the frenzied beat of the iron-shod hoofs became more measured as the chestnut shortened her stride. It was no longer merely the thrashing, thunderous devil’s tattoo of sheer, panic-driven speed.

Now and again Jean could hear Burke’s voice, speaking to the frightened beast, chiding and reassuring in even, unhurried tones.

She was conscious of no fear, only of an absorbing interest and excitement as to whether Burke would be able to impose his will upon the animal before they reached that precipitous hill the descent of which must infallibly spell ‘destruction’.

She sat very still, her hands locked together, watching... watching....